


Devotion and Betrayal

by whatwecan



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Anger, Angst, Bad Wolf Bay, Beach Sex, F/M, One Shot, Post Bad Wolf Bay, Short One Shot, Smangst, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-19
Updated: 2016-09-19
Packaged: 2018-08-16 02:51:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8083852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whatwecan/pseuds/whatwecan
Summary: The Doctor's left and Rose and Tentoo resolve some issues on the beach.





	

“…Rose. I’m not him.”

If the Doctor’s voice was low, toneless, flat, it was only because the breath seemed to have left him along with the last faint echo of the Tardis’s familiar thrum. 

The woman beside him didn’t blink, refused to glance his way. He’d seen that look on her face before. Directed at tyrannical alien dictators, Daleks, handsy undertakers, but never, never had he imagined Rose would ever be that mad at him. 

She was furious.

The Doctor felt unmoored. Lost. One heart, one life, alone… no trapped in a strange universe, and the woman he loved, who he’d have gladly… in this body, or any previous… gladly have given it all up for, couldn’t even look at him. It seemed to the Doctor as if only the bone crushing pressure of her hand around his was keeping him teathered to the cold, sad, beach.

(It seemed like the roar of the waves had climbed into his skull, pounding and panicking.)

Rose took a deep breath and spoke with her face still turned, staring down the waves with their wicked caps of froth.

“You said you were.” she said, “Before, you said you were him.” He could feel the tremor of fury in her hand, clenching his tighter even as the rest of her body all but turned away from him. “Same man, that’s what you said.”

Behind him the Doctor could hear the crunch of wet sand as Jackie walked away. She’d said something earlier about a hotel up the beach. She was familiar with it, hadn’t even had to scan the horizon. The Doctor cringed. Of course she was. 

“Same man. I am Rose. I’m the same man who traveled with you, and saved you from murderous mannequins, who was knighted and banished by Queen Victoria with you, remember? I’m the same man. The same man who… cared for you.” The Doctor hedged. She wouldn’t want to hear it now would she? Not when she was furious with him. Not while her jaw was clenched like that and her eyes were glassy with tears unshed. He’d just sound like he was wheedling.

He was of course, but subtle. That was the way to go about it. Rose needed the Doctor. Not some terrified, lost human, shivering in the ocean mist. “I’m the same man, right up until I…”

“Changed?”

“Metacrisis…ed. Crisis-ed?” Oh god. Crisis indeed. This was a disaster. Even with the slant view the Doctor had of Rose’s face he could see her settle into a deeper scowl. Still his mouth ran on without him. And some strangely detached portion of his still magnificently large brain wondered if Rose had ever known, that all the strutting and rambling he did in the face of murderous monsters was less cocky self-assurance than it was pure panic. Likely she did. The woman knew him better than he knew himself. 

Rose turned, finally leveling her stare at him for the first time, as he spouted some babble, playing for time as if he still had it in infinite supply.

“It’s like… I know. It’s like when you have a scientific experiment, a drug trial. He’s the control group, all Time Lordy and unchanged, and I’m the experimental group. The same, but then exposed to the variable and, BOOM, everything’s different. So you see I am him, just not the him you’re mad at.”

Blimey, what’s he even saying? It’s barely even coherent. There’s a silent accusations her eyes and he can hardly take it. The words… whatever right words he has, about love and devotion, are stuck in his throat, choking him, and all that comes out is nonsense, rubbish. 

The salt in the air is so thick he feels like he could drown in it.

“You left me.” Rose drops his hand and the Doctor looks up shocked. He’s never heard this kind of venom in her voice. “Tell me, why would he do that? He couldn’t even say it. You couldn’t even say it, just whispered it in my ear like some dirty little secret.” 

She’s shoving him in the chest now, just like she had when he up and regenerated on her and let her think he was a slitheen. The Doctor staggers back a step. She’s pounding with her fists against his chest and the Doctor can feel his single tatty heart thumping back in sympathy. “Why would he do that?” she demands of him, “Why? I tore physics apart to get back to you. Why would you leave me? He didn’t even say goodbye. Why would you leave me?”

Rose is sobbing now, her face red and blotchy like he’s never seen it before and he can hear himself begging. Every stupid, desperate demand he’s ever wanted to make of her. Don’t cry Rose, don’t leave me. Please Rose, I love you, I’ve always loved you. He doesn’t know why he does these things. He’ll do better, be better. Please. 

It’s all gone wrong, every life, every universe, every body. He’s cursed. The Doctor scrabbles for her hand, but Rose snatches it out of reach and turns away. Her puffy eyes already following Jackie’s footprints up the beach. And this can’t be the way it ends, here on this fucking beach. He doesn’t mean to force her but he’s desperate. The Doctor grabs her, spins Rose around bodily and presses his clammy lips to hers. 

They’d been kissing before. Before that idiot abandoned them in a universe that wasn’t their own. They were in love, and kissing, and the Doctor would sell his soul to go back there. 

It’s sloppy and artless. His hands are bracketing her head, his fingers tangled in her hair and he’s kissing her as if he could somehow breathe her into himself. Rassilon, he feels so empty, hollow, like a hunger without hunger. He needs her. And now that he’s started kissing her, he can’t stop. He can’t bear to pull away and face the consequences of his impulse. 

It isn’t until his hands have trailed down to clutch at her hips that the Doctor registers that Rose isn’t pushing him away. She’s kissing him back. Where their first kiss had been full of promise, this time Rose is defiant, her fierceness almost a match for his dispair. The Doctor can’t bring himself to care though. He’ll take it any way he can get it. 

Rose is still sobbing in between kisses, her hands balled in his shirt front, and it’s all he can do to chase her tears away with his lips. Even the sad taste of her salt is sweeter than the ocean air he’d been choking on a moment ago. 

He’s grabbing at her, clutching her, pressing himself against her, and it’s not lust, not even love, not even a conscious decision but raw need that fuels him. 

He’s so fevered by her touch he barely registers which of his senses, human or time lord, tell him that behind them, along the jutting sandstone cliffs is a small beach cave, secluded, private. And he couldn’t say for certain whether it’s him pushing, or her pulling that gets them there. But he know’s where this is going. Where this was always going. As inevitable as a supernova and Rassilon, the comparisons don’t end there.

The air in the cave is damp, it smells of secrets, and decay, and small scuttling things. He doesn’t care. This isn’t how he’d pictured their first time. (He’d never thought it would happen, but that hadn’t stopped his fertile imagination from picturing it.) Still in his fantasies they’d been tender, he’d taken his time to savor the experience… on a bed. 

Sand pours into his trainers as he scrambles for footing, pressing himself up against Rose and her up against the cold rock. 

He’s achingly hard now, can feel himself throbbing against the confines of his trousers. Rose’s little gasp of surprise as he grinds himself against her tells him she can feel it too. Taking her wrists in one hand as he kisses his way down her neckline, the Doctor pins Rose against the wall. It’s rough and cold but her jacket should guard her back against the chill. With his free hand the Doctor fumbles open the button and zip of her trousers. He wants her. Here. Now. At any cost. 

He can smell her, her arousal. Has done before but this time it’s for him. Rose’s moans, her kisses, and the sodding, silken heat of her as he drags his fingers through her folds to tease and stroke her. He may be rubbish, a bastard, abandoning her in one body, and frail and half-human in the other, but at least he can show her satisfaction. Give her pleasure before he takes his own.

He’d like to call it generosity but there’s a dark grasping part of him that wants to see her face contort in bliss, and know that he did that; wants to hold the image in his mind as he fucks her. 

The Doctor buries his face in Rose’s hair as he works her, whispering to her “I’m yours.” over and over like a litany, like a mystic incantation. It’s the only answer to her questions that he can give her. The truest truth he knows, a truth universal in this universe or the other. Poor fare he may be but he’s hers. All of him. Any him.

Somewhere in another life, theres a dark spot where a star should be. Somewhere there’s a lonely heartbroken man who burned up a sun just to tell this woman that he loved her. Only to fumble the words when the moment counted the most. But here and now she’s hot in his arms, and he’ll be dammed if he lets her down again. The Doctor licks his lips, imagining how sweet it will be to whisper the words in her ear as she comes on his fingers. 

She’s close. He can feel her beginning to writhe and clench. But just as he goes to nip at her neck and redouble his efforts Rose wretches her hands from his grasp and pushes him away. Theres fire in her eyes and he’s about to mumble some sort of apology, or bloody scream in frustration when he catches her intention. She wants all of him, his cock inside her as she comes. And she tells him so as she frees him from his trousers and pants, and wriggles out of her own. 

And again, in his fantasies, he’d always seen her, before he had her for the first time. Bared her to his gaze, and stroking hands, and suckling lips before he sunk himself into her sweetness and patiently found his release. But when Rose wraps her legs around his hips, and his cock slips against where she’s wet for him, he’d have to be inhuman to resist her. He’s never felt more human.  
With her back against the cave wall and one hand beneath her he can lift her well enough. With the other hand, he reaches down to tease and spread her wetness along his cock before angling it and slowly lowering her heat and salvation onto himself.

She’s hot and tight and feels amazing wrapped around him and so he tells her so. Whispers filth in her pretty ear as he takes her. Takes everything she’ll give him. He tells her how sweet she feels, how much he’s wanted her, always wanted her, always loved her. His Rose, he’s hers if she’ll have him. 

He slams into her, his free hand dropping between them to tease her and bring her close again. And where his lust has made the Doctor vocal, Rose only moans his name and “yes” again and again. 

His name. Not his real name, although that’s hers too, only ever will be hers. He’ll give it to her some other time. But still, hearing his name “Doctor”, “Her Doctor”, fall from Rose’s lips in her pleasure is incredible. And it’s all he can do to wait until she’s there, praising her… yes Rose that’s it, come for me, precious girl… it’s all he can take to hold back, before tumbling after her.

The Doctor doesn’t know what to say, has no words left as he pulls out of her and lowers Rose back down to her feet. Rose had said so very little, and she’d been angry with him. Rassilon, for all he knew this could be a one off, one final bit of closure before she fades from his life for good this time.

It takes every bit of bravery he’s got but he meets her eyes. She’s still angry, he can tell, but there’s love enough there. Yes, there’s love enough there to make this a beginning and not a last hurrah. He knows it then, he just knows it. They can’t go back now. If the sheer explosive force of his orgasm wasn’t enough to rip a hole between dimensions than nothing will, and iIf he’d ever been the same man after the Meta-crisis than he surely wasn’t now. Not now that he’s had her. Not with the smell of her still on his cock.

He can see it with such clarity. No matter if you travel backwards or forwards, between epochs, or universes, in any individual lifetime, time can only move forward. Here and now, on this inauspiciously named beach, everything he ever was, any future he may have held, has already shattered in her arms. But he can scrape it back again, reform it. They can be something new, better, together. 

He draws breath to share his revelation with Rose, but she’s still kissing him hungrily, still defiant in the face of their completion. As if they haven’t already found as much satisfaction and solace as two people can find in each other’s bodies. And maybe they haven’t at that. Maybe they never will. She always sees the things he misses. And as for his revelation? Well, she knows. 

She knows.


End file.
